With just over a month before Election Day, the race in Congressional District 1 between Representative Nick LaLota, the Republican incumbent, and John Avlon, a former CNN anchor, is set to get interesting.
Closely watched, the seat has been held by Republicans since 2015. Democrats, however, especially East End Democrats, if the number of John Avlon signs put up since his primary victory over Nancy Goroff are any indication, are hopeful that Mr. Avlon could, at long last, flip it blue.
As of Aug. 30, according to data released by the Federal Election Commission, Mr. LaLota had raised $2,974,261 compared to Mr. Avlon’s $2,281,681. (Mr. Avlon entered the race in February 2024, and the money is tracked from January 2023.) The big difference is that almost all of Mr. Avlon’s money, $2,261,911, has come from individual contributions, putting his campaign 15th nationwide for individual contributions, while the bulk of Mr. LaLota’s money, $1,169,428, has come from political action and other committees.
CD-1 runs from Montauk west to Eastport, where it makes a hard turn north to meet up with the Long Island Expressway in Riverhead, connecting with the northern range of the district, which encompasses the area north of the expressway between Orient Point and Huntington.
Thus far, one striking feature of the campaign has been a skirmish about residence. In separate News 12 Long Island interviews in early September, each candidate spent more than 75 percent of the time discussing that single issue.
Below, in phone conversations both men answered questions about coastal resiliency, tick-borne illnesses, immigration, and the political divide.
Nick LaLota: A Stab at Bipartisanship
Representative Nick LaLota has lately used his advantage as an incumbent to highlight bills he has passed with speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives, while touting the $150 million in federal funds he has brought to the district.
For example, at the end of September he introduced the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act, which would prevent federal money “from being used to bail out sanctuary cities, including New York City, for a migrant crisis they helped create.” The bill passed with the support of all House Republicans and 12 Democrats.
“I’ve been one of the most productive freshman members of Congress,” he said by phone. “I’ve passed more bills than 97 percent of my peers, eight with Democratic votes, and 20 amendments.”
He also spoke at Donald Trump’s recent rally in Nassau County. “Nine months ago, I became the first congressman from a purple district to endorse Donald J. Trump,” he told the audience, before touching on the migrant crisis theme and mistakes he feels New York City has made in “prioritizing illegals over hard-working American taxpayers.”
In conversation, Mr. LaLota struck more of a centrist tone on immigration. “My position on the border is not unlike Bill Clinton’s,” he said. “I’ve had a centrist, moderate, practical position on this. This should not be a partisan thing to say: We have rules and laws, and we should support those rules and laws. We should have immigration quotas commensurate with our labor needs. Today’s Democratic Party has gone off the rails on this, spending $5 billion on free hotels and health care for migrants, all the while cutting into funding that could be used in Long Island schools.”
“I want to be focused on solutions,” he continued. “I don’t care who presents them, which party. Even Trump’s detractors must acknowledge he’s been right on the border. There was no reason to cancel ‘Remain in Mexico,’ “ he said. (The policy had some asylum seekers wait out their U.S. immigration court proceedings in Mexico, instead of in this country. It was ended by the Biden administration in August 2022.)
While immigration is making headlines in national media outlets, the recent destruction by Hurricane Helene serves as a reminder that the East End sits on an water-bound swath of land, vulnerable to a different type of inundation. Mr. LaLota said that as co-chairman of the Long Island Sound Caucus, he helped pass the Long Island Sound Restoration and Stewardship Reauthorization Act, which reauthorized existing programs, like the Long Island Sound Study, through 2028. It’s focused more on water quality and habitat restoration than hurricane preparedness and disaster relief.
Through a separate community funding project, he said, he secured extra money for the Town of Southold that was used on police cars, which freed the town’s budget for sand replenishment on important beaches.
“Readers would be interested, while only a third of CD-1 residents live on the East End, about 75 percent of the dollars I was able to allocate for community project funding went to the East End,” he said. “I recognize the importance of coastal and water quality issues.” In fact, he secured $1.25 million in federal funding for the sewer expansion project in Sag Harbor Village.
Further highlighting his centrist streak, Mr. LaLota noted that the biggest grant he secured was $3 million for bulkhead renovations at Mitchell Park in Greenport. “That despite the fact that Mayor Kevin Stuessi is actively campaigning against me,” he joked.
If rising storm waters don’t get us, surely the ticks will. Mr. LaLota said the way the federal government can get at that issue is usually through finances. “Bridget Fleming was a leader on that issue. I’d work with county officials to ensure that if there are federal resources available to study tick-borne illness that they get to the East End.”
Speaking of insects, Mr. LaLota recently spoke on the House floor when he was able to get an amendment to the Fix Our Forests Act that directs the Department of Agriculture to conduct a study on the impact of beetle infestations — causes, effects, and potential solutions, with a particular focus on forests in the Northeast. “Nowhere is this issue more evident than in my home district,” he said on the House floor.
Mr. LaLota was one of only six Republicans to sign a bipartisan letter pledging to respect the results of the upcoming presidential election. That shouldn’t be a political risk in a democratic country, but since Jan. 6, 2021, it has become a liability in certain circles. “I’m a Navy man. I’ll do the right thing in this office and whatever political consequence it has, good or bad, I’ll accept.” He served on the Suffolk County Board of Elections and certified the results of the 2020 election.
“I’m feeling good, and I’m focused on finishing strong,” he said. “The next month I’ll be busy traveling the eight towns in the district, making sure residents know how hard I’m working for them.”
John Avlon Keeps to the Center
“There is no place we’re not campaigning,” John Avlon said as he drove from Melville to Huntington last week. He touted fresh endorsements from Republicans, including Sag Harbor Village Mayor Thomas Gardella, and dashed water on a small spark that the LaLota campaign had hoped to turn into a fire, the fact that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hadn’t placed Mr. Avlon on its Frontline candidate list.
“They must have missed the fact that Hakeem Jeffries [the minority leader in the House of Representatives] put us on the Red to Blue list just yesterday,” he said. The Cook Political Report, however, still ranked Representative Nick LaLota’s seat as “likely Republican.”
Bridget Fleming, then a Suffolk County legislator, lost by 11 points to Mr. LaLota in 2022, when Representative Lee Zeldin chose to run for governor. In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the district by 12 points. By 2020, his margin against Joe Biden had shrunk to 4 points.
“I think the trend is our friend, but we also have to out-work and out-hustle the LaLota campaign,” Mr. Avlon said, showing optimism. “That’s how we’ll win. The core message of my campaign is we need to rebuild the middle of our politics and our economy. It’s time to get past the chaos.” The two candidates will engage in three upcoming debates.
Mr. Avlon is optimistic even in the face of climate change, the daunting effects of which have been felt across Congressional District 1 in just the last year. “I remember those storms well,” he said of last year’s winter storms, which shook Montauk. “I spoke with [East Hampton Town Supervisor] Kathee Burke-Gonzalez and asked her if Nick LaLota had showed up. She said no. The first duty of a congressman is to care. Do your job and show up. Coastal erosion doesn’t give a damn what political party you’re a member of, but my opponent wants to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which deals with climate change mitigation in terms of flooding. He wants to claw back funding that could be used to help this community.”
“It’s the same thing in Stony Brook, with the recent storm that washed away a road and led to rock and mudslides. We stopped canvassing for two days and focused on wellness checks. People were frankly stunned to see someone reach out.”
Reaching out has been a centerpiece of Mr. Avlon’s campaign, which claims to have knocked on 71,000 doors. Should he win, he has promised to hold one public, in-person, town hall-style meeting in the district per month. Mr. LaLota, he said, hasn’t held one. “How can you effectively represent people if you’re not willing to listen?”
In a statement, Mr. LaLota responded, “My opponent lies about his residency, my abortion stance, solutions to the Biden Border Crisis, and his hyper-partisanship. In contrast, I am a lifelong Long Islander who’s been 100-percent accessible, transparent, and accountable to my fellow Suffolk County residents from day one. I’ve hosted numerous open events, where payment or party affiliation was never a condition. At these events, I take questions on everything from abortion and January 6th to the border and economy.”
Mr. Avlon is in favor of giving tax deductions to homeowners who invest in resiliency and said the federal government should continue to fund efforts like the Fire Island to Montauk Point project. “There’s mitigation and innovation, and federal dollars have a role to play in both,” he said, highlighting the fact that both Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University are in the district. “We need to make sure we’re investing to spark that next technological revolution. Innovation is the most American way to deal with the climate change problem.”
The rise of tick-borne illnesses may or may not be directly related to climate change, but no one is arguing about the doubling of these illnesses in just the last decade. “It’s a growing problem,” admitted Mr. Avlon, who said that after his kids come in from playing, taking a hot shower and searching for ticks have become a fact of life. “The federal government can invest in research to make sure tick bites don’t become life-disrupting events.”
Oddly, ticks have even exacerbated water quality issues, because residents spray pesticides trying to kill the pests. “Funding research to create solutions to solve these problems is the proper role of the government,” he said.
Immigration has received a lot of attention in this presidential election year, and Mr. Avlon has a centrist approach. “It shouldn’t be controversial to say we need more legal immigration and less illegal immigration,” he said. “To restore faith in the system, we need to fix it. My opponent is making noise about migrants, but when he had a chance to fix it, he didn’t. Instead, he played a role in killing a bipartisan bill. He can’t hide behind the fact that Mike Johnson [the speaker of the House] didn’t put it up for a vote. Nick LaLota could have stayed principled, and he could have said we have an obligation to act. Instead, he piled on when Donald Trump told him to. I’d vote for that bill on day one.”
“We need to hire the right number of judges to make sure we’re adjudicating the asylum claims faster. You can do ‘stunt legislation’ to make the problem worse or take part in fixing it. Comprehensive immigration reform gets derailed by the far right and the far left. Let’s fix the problem at its root.”
Mr. LaLota, Mr. Avlon said, is running as a centrist, when in fact “he’s the least bipartisan member of the Long Island delegation. People shouldn’t fall for that old dance: pretending you’re a moderate at home and then following Donald Trump’s every word. Sure, he certified the election, but you don’t get points or a gold star for doing what should be a given in a democracy. That’s not a sign of bipartisanship. That’s the lowest bar ever.”
